This picture has been contributed by Dr. Sajad Arif, Associate Professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.

In January 2017, my 12-year old son went for a skiing course to Gulmarg. A more- than-usual heavy snowfall, the heaviest in the last 25 years, interrupted the training program and the kids found themselves barricaded in a hotel. To entertain them, a movie entitled Avalanche was screened for them by the organisers. As was apparent from the title itself, and the prevailing weather conditions outside, it was decidedly a poor choice. My terrified son, who was on his own for the first time, wanted to return home. It was to prevent his leaving the course halfway that I decided to join him. I barely managed to reach Gulmarg, and once there, I too was stuck because it snowed heavily without a break for three days and three nights, the snow piling up more than 7 feet.

Gazing at the swirling snowflakes through my hotel room window, I spied groups of monkeys coming down from nearby forests to forage for food. I rushed to the 4th floor of the hotel and aimed my camera through one of the washroom windows. It took me nearly two hours to get some shots, my cold benumbed hands and uncomfortable posture making things pretty difficult. The bad light due to the heavy snowfall, the slow shutter speed required, and the non-availability of a tripod, added further to my woes. Nonetheless, it was an enchanting moment. My crisis management trip turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My son stayed back and learned skiing, and eventually managed to secure the second position in a competition. I, too, learned skiing, something that I had never ever got around to doing… and as a bonus, I managed to obtain some beautiful wildlife and landscape photographs, which have got published in some of the leading journals of India. The credit, of course, go to my son and the person who had this wild idea of terrifying the kids with a movie that was so inappropriate for the occasion. In every adversity, lies a window of opportunity!

This picture has been taken by the hand-held Nikon D5200 at ISO 400, a focal length of 140, an aperture focal ratio of 5.6, and an exposure time of 1/13 sec.